


The Seven Days of Starship Repair

by Sunchales



Category: Star Control (Video Games)
Genre: Alcohol, Infidelity, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:59:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8888308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunchales/pseuds/Sunchales
Summary: Commander Hayes thinks back on the development of his relationship with the young human captain. Did it really matter when the fate of the galaxy was at stake? Yes. It really did.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Niki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niki/gifts).



> _Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters_ is...well, there's a version of it legally available for free download.
> 
> Niki, I hope you enjoy this fic. Toward the end, there's a mention of an open marriage, which I didn't think would bother you; if it does, I apologize.

_We still have Stone Age hearts and minds in this age of space travel_ , Commander Hayes thought as he stared down at his plate of nutrition cubes. Pushing the bright red and yellow shapes around his fork, he tried to nip the unhelpful feelings before they could grow, but they surged forth nonetheless.

Even after the universe had beaten the threats of enslavement and genocide, Hayes still felt that something was missing. He had always scoffed at the sentimental notion that love was the most powerful force in the cosmos, but in the afterglow of relief that always followed the evasion of death, he had to confess that he still felt incomplete.

Admitting it was horrible, but in some ways he felt happier when the Ur-Quan slave ships were still active. Back then, he could look forward to visits from Dylan—the unlikely hero of the Alliance of Free Stars. An impulsive, immature, not-all-that-bright (Hayes readily acknowledged the fact) young man leading a multitude of races from various corners of the universe to freedom was almost too clichéd to bear thinking about, but it really happened…and Hayes loved being part of it. Something about Dylan’s boldness and unflappably chipper demeanor told Hayes that this young man was indomitable (his ship’s name, in fact), that he possessed the sort of mind that most people would call insane or idealistic but would ultimately mean the difference between victory and defeat. No one ever won a war by giving up, after all.

Plus, Dylan obviously loved the exploration that saving the universe required. Even the tedium of gathering minerals crumbled beneath the thrill of meeting new species, forming alliances, and discovering new worlds. The very thought was almost absurd, but when whimsy struck him, Hayes compared himself mentally to an old-time homemaker awaiting her sea captain’s husband’s return from distant lands. The absurdity of this comparison did not come from a tall, muscular man such as Hayes likening himself to a woman—Earthlings had long since moved past the misconception of two equal and opposite sexes, figured out foolproof sex-reconfiguration technology, and accepted the groundbreaking theories of gender scholars so widely that disbelieving them was like believing that Arilou never interfered with human society—but from the knowledge that no housewife of centuries past had the responsibility for outfitting her husband with supplies and crew, although she led a stressful life all the same. But did ever a housewife in days of yore see those strange, awe-inspiring lands for herself?

Hayes looked up from the colorful mound on his plate and instead rose and walked to the enormous picture window, where he gazed out upon Earth, now resplendent in its natural blue and green, free from the throbbing red that locked it away from the rest of the universe not too long ago. From this viewpoint, the Starbase was a counterfeit paradise, an artificial construct built just out of reach of Heaven, tantalizing all those who dwelt within the station’s walls with glimpses of a bliss not to be realized in life. Perhaps the keenest pleasures existed on Earth, where Hayes originally hailed from and Dylan’s ancestors had dwelt.

Life aboard a space station provided those who lived it with everything but sensory pleasure. Was the calm, efficient sterility of the Starbase superior to planetside joys?

Thoughts of Earth turned to thoughts of what might have been if his conversations with Dylan had gone differently. Hayes remembered his first meeting with the young captain and how it was one damn thing after another: Starbase almost running out of energy until the captain flew off to fuel them up, the breathtaking sight of that massive flagship, the Ilwrath attack—and the captain’s response to that alone almost convinced Hayes that the Alliance would make it through everything…but the best part was what happened afterward. Or, rather, several of the best parts were what happened afterward.

***

On the first day of flagship repair, Hayes helped Dylan and his crew settle in. “Whoa, that battle was a doozy,” said Dylan, stepping inside the Starbase along with his crew. “So, what do we do now?”

Hayes cleared his throat. He had prepared for moments like this for months. “Make yourselves at home. We’ve got everything you could possibly need here.” He showed them around the station, pointing out the cafeteria, the sleeping quarters, the sick bay, the gymnasium, and the recreation room in turn. Eventually, each crew member had set up in one destination or another, until only the captain was left.

“Don’t you need to freshen up after that battle? I mean, I don’t suggest that you get used to resting up here every time you trade blows with a hostile alien vessel, but we’re here for you.”

“It’s really nice of you to say that,” said Dylan, smiling at Hayes. “But nah, I’m fine. I just want to hang out with you.”

“What? You just fought the first space battle of your life, you’re about to embark on a mission to save everybody in the galaxy from green enslaving hell ships, and the biggest thing on your mind is having a chit-chat with me?” _This kid has some weird priorities_ , Hayes thought. _Maybe he’s not the best choice for a leader of the rebellion…._ He shook his head. The idea was utterly unthinkable. They needed anyone and everyone. 

“Sure! I need to make as many friends as possible, don’t I?”

The young man had a sense of perception after all. In an age of warfare and strife, camaraderie was the most vital weapon of all, as well as the sweetest reward of victory.

“Absolutely, Captain. Friendship is of the utmost necessity right now.”

“You’re not going to go on some speech about sentiment being useless in war or anything, are you? ‘Cause I knew a guy on Unzervalt who wouldn’t make friends with anyone because he was convinced that having any kind of bond with anyone would leave him vulnerable to enemy attack.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Well, he also liked to carve inverted pentagrams into his toast at breakfast. Sometimes he set things on fire outside the compound. I think he was trying to scare people off.”

“And he didn’t consider just asking to be left alone?”

“It didn’t occur to him. I still don’t know what his deal was.”

Hayes patted Dylan on the back. “Whatever his deal was, as you put it, it’s not something you should think about now. Now you need to think about recharging for the mission you and your crew are about to go on.”

“And you can help me recharge, Commander.”

“But Captain, you said you were fine as you were.” _I don’t believe you, of course_ , he thought.

“I meant, I’ll be fine because talking to you helps me relax.” He flashed another bright smile at Hayes, who felt a chip of ice in his heart start to break and melt.

On the second day of flagship repair, Hayes met Dylan in the gymnasium. Hayes did not expect to see the captain there, struggling with the finer points of a turbo-charged elliptical glider.

“Holy crow!” cried Dylan, gripping onto the handlebars for dear life. “What is this, some medieval torture device spruced up for the age of space travel?”

Hayes walked up to the machine’s control panel and pressed the power button. The furious pumping of the footrests and handlebars crunched to a halt, and Dylan breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thanks, Commander. I’m going to like being around you. Too bad we won’t get to see much of each other once the flagship’s ready.” He began to frown.

“That’s not true,” said Hayes, patting him on the shoulder. “You’ll come back here fairly often.”

“Really?”

“Sure. You’ll have to come back to fuel up your ship, to expand your fleet, to buy equipment, to hire more crew, and just to learn more information.”

“And will you always be here?”

“Of course. It’s not like I can go anywhere.” Hayes allowed himself a weak chuckle. “But tell me, you’ve never used exercise equipment like this before?”

Dylan shook his head. “I’ve never used exercise equipment at all until now. Back on Unzervalt, we didn’t need it. We got enough exercise tilling the fields and whatnot.”

“Well, there’s nothing outdoorsy here, Captain. We don’t have a choice but to use machines if we don’t want our bodies to atrophy.”

“Jeez. It would be a real shame for a body like yours to go to waste, Commander.”

That line suggested two interpretations. Hayes knew which one he preferred but decided not to press the matter—not that day, anyway.

On the third day of flagship repair, the commander and his captain had grown close enough to share in one of Earth’s (and, if some stories from the previous war were to be believed, other planets’) favorite guilty pleasures: a ritualized excuse for drunkenness. Both of them sat at the Starbase’s bar, a room consisting of several tables and a gleaming white counter set before rows of chrome cabinets bursting with seventeen thousand and fifty-six different varieties of alcohol. Mixing drinks yielded even more possibilities. One showoff Starbase inhabitant had tried to use a pencil and paper to do the factorials necessary for discovering exactly how many different drinks could be made out of the bar’s alcohol selections. After suffering a nearly fatal case of carpal tunnel syndrome, they finally gave up. That was the last time anyone on Starbase worried about calculations when they were at the bar. “The purpose of a bar is to get drunk,” the average inhabitant of the station might have been heard to say. “It’s no place for math.”

“Are you old enough to drink?” Hayes asked Dylan as they approached the counter.

“What?”

“I said, are you old enough to drink?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Never mind.” He led Dylan into the bar, where they both took their seats on the shining plush red stools before the counter. In front of them stood a glowing-eyed robot whose surface matched the cabinets.

“Cool! A bartending robot! This is just like one of my comic books!”

In a scratchy mechanical voice, the robot asked, "What shall your pleasure be, Commander?"

"I'd like something frothy, green, and not guaranteed to knock me unconscious.”

”And what about you, newcomer?” the robot inquired of Dylan.

“Um, I don’t know what any of these drinks are, so I’ll have what he’s having.”

Within a few seconds, the robot filled two glasses to the brim with a foamy green beverage that sparkled from top to bottom and slid them to the two men.

“Drink and be merry,” said the robot.

“I’ll be as merry as I can be,” Hayes replied. “Well, drink up, Captain.” He titled the glass to his lips.

“Jeez, do you hit the bar every day? How do you get any of the Starbase stuff done?”

“Captain, I could hardly do my work without the help of alcohol.”

“And is there anything else you’re more inclined to do under the influence?” asked Dylan, scooting a little closer to Hayes.

“Yes,” the robot said. “I have seen it happen.”

“Quiet, you.”

On the fourth day of flagship repair, Hayes called the captain back to the bar. This time, Hayes ordered a stronger drink, a silver concoction less frothy than its green predecessor but even shinier. Dylan copied Hayes’s order, and after they both finished guzzling down their sizzling dry delights, Dylan suddenly cried out, “Give me the reddest drink you have!” Soon, he and Hayes banged down drink after drink, going in the order of the color spectrum.

By the time they had finished six drinks apiece, Hayes slouched over onto the bar while Dylan pounded his mug onto the countertop.

“Wait!” he sloshed. “I haven’t gotten to the ultraviolet drinks yet!”

“You have had enough, human,” said the robot.

“Aren’t you supposed to do whatever I tell you?”

“Under most circumstances, I am. However, my highest protocol is never to harm a human. Giving you more alcohol would harm you.”

Dylan growled. “You some kind of smart-aleck?”

”Leave it, Captain,” said Hayes as he lifted his head from the countertop. “‘Sides, smart-aleck robots have been a tradition since….”

He never got to finish his sentence.

On the fifth day of flagship repair, Hayes walked over to the Starbase’s picture window to find Dylan standing there.

“What are you doing over here, Captain?”

“Just thinking about what it was like to live on Earth. Wondering, I mean.”

“One of Earth’s greatest treasures is its state of constant transformation. That’s true of any planet, but on Earth, we were blessed with diversity in everything, and one of those things was the pattern of seasons. Watching the sky change from one season to the next was always a pleasure. The Ur-Quan deprived us of that.”

“I never thought about how much it would suck not to be able to look forward to something so basic. But you still had each other down there, right?”

The commander could not suppress a smile when Dylan wrapped an arm around his waist.

On the sixth day of flagship repair, Dylan and Hayes wrestled in the recreation room. No one else was in there except for the refreshment droid, which might have been secretly recording them on its internal hard drive, but the thrill of pinning Dylan to the sweat-covered plastic mat was too intense for Hayes to care, as long as no one watched the tape.

On the seventh day of flagship repair, Hayes’s resistance broke down. He stole a kiss from the captain when the latter was riffling through the broom closet, and Dylan returned it.

“You could have done that before now, you know,” said Dylan, running his fingers through Hayes’s hair.

“I wanted to wait until we were better acquainted.”

“Hey, there’s no time like the first few minutes of meeting.”

On the eighth day, Dylan and his crew boarded the flagship and took off for the sake of goodness.

As the war against the Ur-Quan raged on, Dylan and Hayes had less time to spend together. Certainly, the captain made frequent visits to Starbase to transfer minerals, bring ship blueprints, and gather further information necessary for the war effort, but the two of them never had the opportunity for lengthy fraternization they once did.

And after the war ended, Dylan married the Syreen commander…. Hayes certainly did not blame him for that decision; Syreen were notoriously seductive—irresistibly so, some said. Hayes doubted that the Syreen’s powers of attraction were the universe’s greatest; he had never fallen under their sway. Still, Dylan, Hayes once again had to admit, did not possess the strongest will or intellect, and Talana was a pretty nice person when you got right down to it. As long as Dylan was happy, Hayes was happy for him…right?

The commander wept into his beer.

Then, an Earthling Cruiser sped into sight. With a sigh, Hayes wiped the tears from his neck and eyes and got to his feet, eventually getting to the port side of the Starbase.

“This is Commander Hayes. I can tell you’re one of ours, but identify yourself.”

“Don’t worry, Hayes. It’s me.”

Hayes gasped.

“Dylan?”

“Yep!”

“But I thought you were settled down on Unzervalt.”

“Not yet. I couldn’t save the galaxy one time and then be done with exploring, you know.”

“Don’t tell me you’re exploring the rest of the universe in a little Cruiser!”

“I’m not. I just thought it would be unnecessary to take the whole flagship to see you.”

“You mean….”

“Of course! Hang on, Hayes, I’m coming aboard!”

Hayes opened the way immediately for Dylan, who sprang into his open arms and planted a kiss on his mouth. As the ache in his chest began to dissolve, Hayes devoured Dylan’s lips with his own.

When he came up for air, Hayes asked, “What about your wife? Does she know about this?”

“Totally, dude. We’ve got an understanding.”

“How does that work?”

Dylan grinned. “She has that natural magnetism, and she likes to use it on different…uh, people, you know? And as wonderful as she is, I couldn’t get you out of my mind. So she has her dalliances, and I have mine.”

For the time being, Hayes did not care whether he was one of multiple partners in Dylan’s implicitly plural sexual side quests. He simply led the captain to the sleeping quarters, where they would finish what they started by the broom closet five years earlier.


End file.
